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Abandonment Quotes

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Abandonment Quotes

“[A]s though mindful of the wife of Lot, who looked back from behind him, thou deliveredst me first to the sacred garments and monastic profession before thou gavest thyself to God. And for that in this one thing thou shouldst have had little trust in me I vehemently grieved and was ashamed. For I (God [knows]) would without hesitation precede or follow thee to the Vulcanian fires according to thy word. For not with me was my heart, but with thee. But now, more than ever, if it be not with thee, it is nowhere. For without thee it cannot anywhere exist.”

MenLoveWomenGriefSacrificeLonelinessTrustIntegrityDignityShameFollowingAbandonmentCelibacySubjectionMonastic LifeConventSelf AbandonmentSelf Abnegation
Book:The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse
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“While the daughter of a helpless father develops a hypercompetent physical self-reliance that encourages her to take responsibility for those around her, the daughter of a distant father becomes more emotionally independent. As an adult, she's wary of depending on others; feeling physically abandoned by one parent and emotionally abandoned by the other, she selects only a handful of people to whom she'll get close.”

ResponsibilityTrustIndependenceParentsRelianceAbandonment
Book:Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss
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“When I was a child in school, one of my teachers complained that we students always told about our achievements in the active mode (I've passed), while we always told about our failures in the passive mode (I've been failed). All of this in Spanish, of course, but it's true, that's how children speak in my country. So the good grades are due to the child's actions, while the failed grades seem to be the responsibility of the teacher. What Lorenzo Scupoli is telling us [in his book "Spiritual Combat"] is just the opposite: whenever I do something right, it's not I who has done it, it's not my action, for God was acting through me. At most I can say that I allowed God to act through me. On the other hand, when I do something wrong (sin) I myself am the only responsible, for I didn't allow God to take control. Therefore I should trust only God and not me, for whenever I insist to take control, I do something wrong.”

GodSpiritualityTrustPrideControlCatholicismAbandonmentCristianismoTrust YourselfTrusting God
Author:Manuel Alfonseca
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“Embrace the Sun To the sun, you are everything. To the clouds, you will never be enough. Stop chasing the clouds in your life. You don’t have to chase the sun, it will find you. Just have faith and walk towards the light.”

StrengthAbandonmentNegative PeopleBreakup QuotesHeartbreak QuotesEmpowerment QuotesRejection QuotesJanet Autherine Quotes
Book:The Heart and Soul of Black Women: Poems of Love, Struggle and Resilience
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“I was alone. I had no one. No mother, no father, no brothers, no sisters, no grandmas, no grandpas, no uncles, no aunties, no cousins, and no tribe. I’d seen the children at the orphanage laugh or cry when they received news about a family member. I would never receive such news and no family would laugh or cry for me. That day I understood with sharp clarity that I didn’t have a mother who wanted me.”

InspirationalFamilySelf LoveHeartbreakBraveryIsolationAutobiographyAbandonmentOrphan
Book:Africa's Child
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“The soft glow of the fairy lights in her room, the way her arm warmers covered the bandages on her wrists. She had made them herself, tiny stitches woven into the fabric like a secret, a small act of care for a body she was learning to hate.”

LoveGriefLonelinessHeartbreakTraumaBetrayalRejectionManipulationWorthAbandonment
Book:Nowhere Strangers: A Sapphic Coming-of-Age Story of Digital Romance, Heartbreak, and Self-Discovery
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“Her breath caught in her throat. She knew what he was doing. She had seen it in books, in movies, in the hushed conversations of girls who had learned their lessons too late.”

LoveGriefLonelinessHeartbreakTraumaBetrayalRejectionManipulationWorthAbandonment
Book:Nowhere Strangers: A Sapphic Coming-of-Age Story of Digital Romance, Heartbreak, and Self-Discovery
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“The tears gathered and stood without overflowing the red sockets. Ah! if I were rich still, if I had kept my money, if I had not given all to them, they would be with me now; they would fawn on me and cover my cheeks with their kisses! I should be living in a great mansion; I should have grand apartments and servants and a fire in my room; and they would be about me all in tears, and their husbands and their children. I should have had all that; now--I have nothing. Money brings everything to you; even your daughters. My money. Oh! where is my money? If I had plenty of money to leave behind me, they would nurse me and tend me; I should hear their voices, I should see their faces. Ah, God! who knows? They both of them have hearts of stone. I loved them too much; it was not likely that they should love me. A father ought always to be rich; he ought to keep his children well in hand, like unruly horses. I have gone down on my knees to them. Wretches! this is the crowning act that brings the last ten years to a proper close. If you but knew how much they made of me just after they were married. (Oh! this is cruel torture!) I had just given them each eight hundred thousand francs; they were bound to be civil to me after that, and their husbands too were civil. I used to go to their houses: it was 'My kind father' here, 'My dear father' there. There was always a place for me at their tables. I used to dine with their husbands now and then, and they were very respectful to me. I was still worth something, they thought. How should they know? I had not said anything about my affairs. It is worth while to be civil to a man who has given his daughters eight hundred thousand francs apiece; and they showed me every attention then--but it was all for my money. Grand people are not great. I found that out by experience! I went to the theatre with them in their carriage; I might stay as long as I cared to stay at their evening parties. In fact, they acknowledged me their father; publicly they owned that they were my daughters. But I was always a shrewd one, you see, and nothing was lost upon me. Everything went straight to the mark and pierced my heart. I saw quite well that it was all sham and pretence, but there is no help for such things as these. I felt less at my ease at their dinner-table than I did downstairs here. I had nothing to say for myself. So these grand folks would ask in my son-in-law's ear, 'Who may that gentleman be?'-- 'The father-in-law with the money bags; he is very rich.'--'The devil, he is!' they would say, and look again at me with the respect due to my money. Well, if I was in the way sometimes, I paid dearly for my mistakes. And besides, who is perfect? (My head is one sore!) Dear Monsieur Eugene, I am suffering so now, that a man might die of the pain; but it is nothing to be compared with the pain I endured when Anastasie made me feel, for the first time, that I had said something stupid. She looked at me, and that glance of hers opened all my veins. I used to want to know everything, to be learned; and one thing I did learn thoroughly --I knew that I was not wanted here on earth.”

LoveFatherWealthGratitudeFatherhoodAbandonmentFrench RevolutionDowryDisapointment
Book:Père Goriot
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“Turn it beautiful. His words came faintly at first, but they came again and again, always softly, always with the insistence of an elder commanding wisdom. Turn it all to beauty. She walked to the rail. When she turned and sat upon it, she heard a sailor in the crowd murmur that she might play them a tune. She hoped he was right. She needed the voices to be wrong. Fin raised the instrument to the cleft of her neck and closed her eyes. She emptied her mind and let herself be carried back to her earliest memory, the first pain she ever knew: the knowledge that her parents didn’t want her. The despair of rejection coursed through her. It fathered a knot of questions that bound her, enveloped her. Waves of uncertainty and frailty shook her to the bones. Her body quivered with anger and hopelessness. She reeled on the edge of a precipice. She wanted to scream or to throw her fists but she held it inside; she struggled to control it. She fought to subjugate her pain, but it grew. It welled up; it filled her mind. When she could hold it no more, exhausted by defiance and wearied by years of pretending not to care, Bartimaeus’s words surrounded her. Got to turn it beautiful. She dropped her defenses. She let weakness fill her. She accepted it. And the abyss yawned. She tottered over the edge and fell. The forces at war within her raced down her arms and set something extraordinary in motion; they became melody and harmony: rapturous, golden. Her fingers coaxed the long-silent fiddle to life. They danced across the strings without hesitation, molding beauty out of the miraculous combination of wood, vibration, and emotion. The music was so bright she felt she could see it. The poisonous voices were outsung. Notes raged out of her in a torrent. She had such music within her that her bones ached with it, the air around her trembled with it, her veins bled it. The men around fell still and silent. Some slipped to the deck and sat enraptured like children before a travelling bard.”

PainSufferingBeautyMusicDespairDepressionRedemptionAbandonmentOrphanFiddle
Book:Fiddler's Green
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“When basic human needs are ignored, rejected, or invalidated by those in roles and positions to appropriately meet them; when the means by which these needs have been previously met are no longer available: and when prior abuse has already left one vulnerable for being exploited further, the stage is set for the possibility these needs will be prostituted. This situation places a survivor who has unmet needs in an incredible dilemma. She can either do without or seek the satisfaction of mobilized needs through some "illegitimate" source that leaves her increasingly divided from herself and ostracized from others. While meeting needs in this way resolves the immediate existential experience of deprivation and abandonment. it produces numerous other difficulties. These include experiencing oneself as “bad” or "weak" for having such strong needs; experiencing shame and guilt for relying on “illegitimate” sources of satisfaction: experiencing a loss of self-respect for indulging in activities contrary to personal moral standards of conduct; risking the displeasure and misunderstanding of others important to her; and opening oneself to the continued abuse and victimization of perpetrators who are all too willing to selfishly use others for their own pleasure and purposes under the guise of being 'helpful.”

NeedsHumanityEvilWeaknessAbuseShameVictimGuiltVulnerabilityManipulationNeglectSurvivorAbandonedChild AbuseExploitationEmotional AbuseDeprivedAbandonmentProstitutionDeprivationAbuse Of PowerBasic NeedsGuilty ConscienceVictimizationOstracismEmotional NeglectExploitInvalidationAbuse Of Authority
Author:J. Jeffrey Means
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“It was hard to invest in a person when one saw how things passed. Take the ball player, for example, who dedicates his life, gets injured, and then watches the sport proceed without him. He sits on his leather couch, watching better athletes run across his television screen, younger ones on renovated fields. And he, who sacrificed his sweat, youth, and sanity to the sport and knew coaches, teammates, and even janitors at the stadium like brothers—is forced to still live afterward. His teammates said kind words before a match, hugged him after a goal, but now seem to be focused on new seasons and new goals. He gets left behind. Did none of it mean anything? He cries for the fast world to stop and says, “Slow down. This pains me. We were just here. I used to joke with you. We said we loved each other. Wait for me. Will you just wait for me?” Those hands he shook after a victory could not care for the weeping, broken-footed man hiding in the shadows of his home, once lit by the sun, once the life of the party. When Andrei walked into a job now, or even met someone for the first time, he thought: How long will it take you to forget me?”

FearSportsFriendshipSadnessSocietyLonelinessFailureSolitudeIllnessAbandonment
Book:A Happy Ghost
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“Sometimes, Andrei would feel like the moon. When he dined in solitude, when he masturbated to the couple at the hotel, or when he finished a book he could tell no one around him about, he felt singular and unaccompanied, like the stupid, radiating circle stuck in the sky. His soul would glow softly, through the darkness, deadened, but there, as if solemnly leaving a light on for anyone to come join him. Andrei would feel so far away from everyone else, like a floating object in space, lost in orbit, that no hand worried about, remembered, or attempted to retrieve.”

SadnessSocietyLonelinessSolitudeMoonDepressionAbandonment
Book:A Happy Ghost
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“There’s just no accounting for happiness, or the way it turns up like a prodigal who comes back to the dust at your feet having squandered a fortune far away. And how can you not forgive? You make a feast in honor of what was lost, and take from its place the finest garment, which you saved for an occasion you could not imagine, and you weep night and day to know that you were not abandoned, that happiness saved its most extreme form for you alone.”

HappinessPoetrySadnessPoemAbandonment
Author:Jane Kenyon
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“He thrust his pelvis against his mattress, humping his pillow and thinking of no particular woman or memory, but merely the idea of being touched by someone—anyone. It was a sort of sorrowful pornography, masturbating to the day he would never need to masturbate. He closed his eyes and released on his sheets two fluids of desperation: semen of a lonely man and tears of a lonelier one.”

SadnessLonelinessSolitudeIsolationAbandonmentSad QuotesMasturbationThe Goodbye Song
Book:The Goodbye Song
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“Something was wrong with him - and down deep he'd known his whole life. Maybe the wards had even said something. (You are not right, boy.) Maybe the other children had. (What's wrong with you?) Maybe it had happened while he watched one child after another walk off with a family from the Eastern Villages, with a merchant or a farmer. (You know no one will ever take you, right?) Maybe he'd even said it to himself.”

Self EsteemLiesSelf WorthRejectionWorthAbandonmentSelf Hate
Book:The Real Boy
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“I flopped on the overstuffed kitchen couch and watched him go. I wondered what would happen to all his films and photographs in the upstairs closet - the documentaries on homelessness and drug addiction, the funny short subjects, the half-finished romantic comedy, the boxes of slice-of-life photographs that spoke volumes about the human condition. I wondered how you stop caring about what you've ached over, sweated over. (Thwonk)”

ChoicesWorkFamilyPrioritiesAbandonment
Author:Joan Bauer
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“It has just been discovered that women carry fetal cells from all the babies they have carried. Crossing the defensive boundaries of our immune system and mixing with our own cells, the fetal cells circulate in the mother’s bloodstream for decades after each birth. The body does not tolerate foreign cells, which trigger illness and rejection. But a mother’s body incorporates into her own the cells of her children as if they recognize each other, belong to each other. This fantastic melding of two selves, mother and child, is called human microchimerism. My three children are carried in my bloodstream still…. How did we not know this? How can this be a surprise?”

LossSilenceFamilyConnectionsSeparationAdoptionAbandonmentShamingBirth TraumaBirth Mothers
Author:Meredith Hall
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